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[This is part of a series exploring the Baseball Tarot. If you would like to prompt for a part of the game or a card from the deck, all the rest of the month is available for your curiosity, about either baseball or Tarot. Leave a comment with a prompt if you want in. All other comments are still welcome, of course.]
Pitches in baseball generally fall into a few different categories. Fastballs are meant to be overpowering - lots of velocity, very little movement. Closing pitchers can achieve velocities that flirt with or regularly hit 100 miles per hour, which gives very little time to process whether or not the pitch itself will be a ball or a strike and decide to swing at it. Off-speed pitches, like the change-up, are meant to look like fastballs and provoke the fast reaction time and decisions, but travel at a slightly slower velocity, so as to mess up the timing of the swing. Slightly slower, by the way, can mean anything from 60-85 miles per hour as speed, so it's not slow enough to allow for a conscious adjustment.
Knuckleballs are, well, unique unto themselves, as they don't have any sort of predictable movement as soon as they leave the pitcher's hand, leaving it mostly up to the catcher to be in the right position to catch the ball when physics finally makes a decision about what to do with the pitch.
The final category are the breaking pitches, which are usually also slower than a fastball, which allows them to move through, into, or out of the strike zone from their original position based on their release. Slider-type pitches tend to move horizontally through the strike zone, often trying to sneak in at the last moment or slipping out after the hitter has committed to their swing. The curve ball tends to move vertically, with the same ideas in mind. An excellent curve ball is very difficult to hit, and has a significant amount of movement from high to low as it passes through or out of the strike zone.
That said, the curve is a high-risk pitch, as the poor curve ball, the "hanging curve" that doesn't break...is usually very easy to hit very hard. Apart from knuckleballs, the curve is one of the most difficult pitches to master consistently. Many years of practice and development are needed to get the mechanics and delivery of a curve ball correct, and then more time needs to be spent to make the delivery of the curve resemble all the other pitches that any given pitcher could throw. The rewards may be great, but the time and effort that it will take to get a curve ball up to the skill level it will need to be useful is greater than other pitches.
Curve balls also have been associated with problems at the learning leagues, as learning to throw curves with a young arm can sometimes cause injury or problems with the development of the arm later in on life. This is not a condition to encourage, and is part of the reason why there are also mandatory pitch counts and rest periods enforced at the learning leagues these days - even if you have talented players that may go far in their careers, it does them no good to burn them out or give them lifelong injuries at such an early phase of their development.
Because of the way the curve ball operates, looking like an excellent pitch to hit before sharply dropping out of the strike zone (or looking like nothing before it drops in), the curve has entered the non-baseball lexicon to represent something unexpected or different than what a problem or a process would normally look like Things look like they are proceeding as normal and then they veer into very strange territory, because of a new unknown-until-now requirement, or because a critical piece didn't get delivered in time, or any one of the hundred thousand reasons that interactions between humans or between humans and computers are never quite exactly the same way twice. "Being thrown a curve" is something everyone understands happens many times in their lifetime. Interestingly enough, not many people anticipate being the one who throws curves at others, despite the fact that clearly someone has to be doing it if everyone expects it to happen and is making plans and contingencies for it.
It is this meaning that the curve ball takes in the Baseball Tarot - something unexpected or not anticipated is on the way. If you're the hitter, unless you're sitting on a curve, ready to hit it, the best you can probably do is foul it off, or, if lucky, you can see the dip about to happen and hold off on swinging at it. Once you've seen one, though, prepare for the possibility of others. Depending on your strike count, you may have to protect the plate a bit more aggressively than usual, just to try and get on a curve before it drops. This will mean adjustments on other pitches as well. Foul enough pitches off, and the one you really want may finally come for you to hit.
If you're throwing curves, realize that they're not going to fool everyone all the time, and that over-reliance on any one pitch will eventually come back to bite you, either because your execution won't be good and you leave the curve hanging, or the hitter will start to anticipate your curve and hit it very hard. There's a time and a place for each kind of pitch, certainly, but lots of pitchers get by without needing a curve, and it's still a really difficult pitch to do well. Maybe rethink your approach if you find yourself reaching for your curve too often - other people aren't very fond of someone who regularly drops unexpected things into their lap.
Pitches in baseball generally fall into a few different categories. Fastballs are meant to be overpowering - lots of velocity, very little movement. Closing pitchers can achieve velocities that flirt with or regularly hit 100 miles per hour, which gives very little time to process whether or not the pitch itself will be a ball or a strike and decide to swing at it. Off-speed pitches, like the change-up, are meant to look like fastballs and provoke the fast reaction time and decisions, but travel at a slightly slower velocity, so as to mess up the timing of the swing. Slightly slower, by the way, can mean anything from 60-85 miles per hour as speed, so it's not slow enough to allow for a conscious adjustment.
Knuckleballs are, well, unique unto themselves, as they don't have any sort of predictable movement as soon as they leave the pitcher's hand, leaving it mostly up to the catcher to be in the right position to catch the ball when physics finally makes a decision about what to do with the pitch.
The final category are the breaking pitches, which are usually also slower than a fastball, which allows them to move through, into, or out of the strike zone from their original position based on their release. Slider-type pitches tend to move horizontally through the strike zone, often trying to sneak in at the last moment or slipping out after the hitter has committed to their swing. The curve ball tends to move vertically, with the same ideas in mind. An excellent curve ball is very difficult to hit, and has a significant amount of movement from high to low as it passes through or out of the strike zone.
That said, the curve is a high-risk pitch, as the poor curve ball, the "hanging curve" that doesn't break...is usually very easy to hit very hard. Apart from knuckleballs, the curve is one of the most difficult pitches to master consistently. Many years of practice and development are needed to get the mechanics and delivery of a curve ball correct, and then more time needs to be spent to make the delivery of the curve resemble all the other pitches that any given pitcher could throw. The rewards may be great, but the time and effort that it will take to get a curve ball up to the skill level it will need to be useful is greater than other pitches.
Curve balls also have been associated with problems at the learning leagues, as learning to throw curves with a young arm can sometimes cause injury or problems with the development of the arm later in on life. This is not a condition to encourage, and is part of the reason why there are also mandatory pitch counts and rest periods enforced at the learning leagues these days - even if you have talented players that may go far in their careers, it does them no good to burn them out or give them lifelong injuries at such an early phase of their development.
Because of the way the curve ball operates, looking like an excellent pitch to hit before sharply dropping out of the strike zone (or looking like nothing before it drops in), the curve has entered the non-baseball lexicon to represent something unexpected or different than what a problem or a process would normally look like Things look like they are proceeding as normal and then they veer into very strange territory, because of a new unknown-until-now requirement, or because a critical piece didn't get delivered in time, or any one of the hundred thousand reasons that interactions between humans or between humans and computers are never quite exactly the same way twice. "Being thrown a curve" is something everyone understands happens many times in their lifetime. Interestingly enough, not many people anticipate being the one who throws curves at others, despite the fact that clearly someone has to be doing it if everyone expects it to happen and is making plans and contingencies for it.
It is this meaning that the curve ball takes in the Baseball Tarot - something unexpected or not anticipated is on the way. If you're the hitter, unless you're sitting on a curve, ready to hit it, the best you can probably do is foul it off, or, if lucky, you can see the dip about to happen and hold off on swinging at it. Once you've seen one, though, prepare for the possibility of others. Depending on your strike count, you may have to protect the plate a bit more aggressively than usual, just to try and get on a curve before it drops. This will mean adjustments on other pitches as well. Foul enough pitches off, and the one you really want may finally come for you to hit.
If you're throwing curves, realize that they're not going to fool everyone all the time, and that over-reliance on any one pitch will eventually come back to bite you, either because your execution won't be good and you leave the curve hanging, or the hitter will start to anticipate your curve and hit it very hard. There's a time and a place for each kind of pitch, certainly, but lots of pitchers get by without needing a curve, and it's still a really difficult pitch to do well. Maybe rethink your approach if you find yourself reaching for your curve too often - other people aren't very fond of someone who regularly drops unexpected things into their lap.
